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- Excessive and unnecessary regulations at all levels of government are making it more difficult to provide affordable housing in communities, the roundtables found. Starting with localities, the development process should be made more reasonable and predictable for new construction, and bureaucratic obstacles to redeveloping abandoned or blighted units should be eliminated. New partners and revenue streams need to be found to stretch the limited resources available for the development of affordable housing, and education about the importance of affordable housing and diverse neighborhoods is needed to reverse NIMBY (Not-In-My-Back-Yard) attitudes.
- With jobs and middle- and upper-class Americans moving farther and farther into the outer suburbs, the time may be ripe for a regional approach to providing affordable housing. Among the approaches suggested were inclusionary zoning policies for developers, region-wide programs supporting housing for working families and regional funding from the federal government. More specific initiatives suggested by roundtable participants included cleaning up environmentally tainted sights, revising liability laws for brownfields, streamlining and expediting permits and approvals, contributing land and offering builders and buyers incentives, tax credits and financing.
- Employers need to get involved in making housing more affordable for their workers, the roundtables found, and they examined employer assisted housing programs that reduced employee turnover and absenteeism and increased worker productivity and employee loyalty. Roundtable participants said that private sector participation was necessary to solve housing problems.
- The federal government needs to find new approaches to distribute financial resources and to find more flexibility to target resources where they are needed. Participants said that “the typical distribution of housing aid by political jurisdiction or by population formula usually provides too much housing aid in some places and not enough in others,” according to the report. They also called for increased funding for federal programs such as the Community Development Block Grants.
“The watchword we hear is ‘flexibility,’” Egan told the housing symposium. “Federal programs are too constrained, rigid and too prescriptive.” He added that federal programs should do more to encourage cooperation among different jurisdictions.
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